armindilo
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
I started typing this in my Intro post, but decided to make a post just for this!
This all started with a dirty aquarium on the side of the road and the thought "Hey, no problem, we'll get this tank and some fish..."
My wife and I were driving through town during cleanup-week looking scavenging other people's garbage (beacuase we are cool like that!) and we saw this tank at someone's curb. It was pretty dirty, but it looked like mostly superficial dirt, so we thought thought we'd take it home, see if it was feasible to use, and we'd get some fish, and the kids would love it!
Fast forward 6 months or so (after some home renos that took priority) and I'm finally getting around to digging the aquarium out of the shed.
I think it is a 20 gal. It measures 12" x 24 x 16". I cleaned it all up, filled it with water. No Leaks! Ya!
I cleaned the filter, and tried it out. Seems to work well enough. It's a Whisper 20-40. From what I can tell it is from the 90's, but I can't find much info on it. Regardless, the bio-bags can be bought at Walmart, so no problem maintaining it. Good! I'm not sure about the bio-foam; It looks ok though, not falling apart. Can that still be used?
The lights are toast. I'm an electrician and an electronics tech, and I scavenge stuff from the side of the road and I looked at it and said, "Nope, not even gonna refurb that!" So, no, it's not worth bothering with. The plastic hood for the light is still good though and LED strips are so cheap on ebay, so I will be able to get that taken care of nicely I think. Do I need any specific wavelength of lighting if I'm not going to have any plants growing in it yet?
The glass under the light is also broken. Someone had tried to fix it with some caulking, but it didn't look like it had worked well. Anyway, I'll get a piece of glass for that. Can I use plexi-glass for that?
After I figured out what I had I went off to the LFS (see that, I'm already using the 'lingo'!) and started asking some really simple questions like the naive soul I was at that time. I discovered I needed some bottles of liquid to treat my water, and that I had to change 25% of my water every week, and that I had to buy new filter stuff every month or two, and that fish are small but expensive. I also needed a heater if I ever wanted to go beyond goldfish.
So that was great, now I had to go back to my wife and see if she was ok with all that too. Well she was, so I thought I should do a bit more research before I actually go any further; having had a few (too many according to my wife) other hobbies, I knew that I would be sold on a whole bunch of stuff that I probably didn't need if I just went about starting things off properly and with a bit of time and money investment up front. Turns out I was kinda right. There is that whole Nitrogen cycle thing!
So, after a trip to walmart, I have in total:
-tank (pretty sure it's 20 gal)
-filter
-heater
-Nutrafin Cycle
-Nutrafin Aquaplus
I would like to cycle my tank with fish in. Apparently that causes a lot of contention in forums like this. How feasible is it for me to do fish-in cycling my first time around? According to the LFS I just put in my water, put in the two Nutrafin products, and put in a couple of goldfish, and it should work out ok. It seems a little bit cludgy to me. I'd rather get a proper test kit (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH) and know what is going on, not just hap-hazardly adding mystery-product to bend the water to my will. Thoughts?
Unfortunately the area I live in is quite sparsely populated, so I won't have much luck getting a piece of someone else's substrate or filter to kick start things. If I get my water in the tank today with the conditioner, how feasible is it to put goldfish in tomorrow without torturing the fish? Should I use the Nutrafin Cycle, or not? There seem to be conflicting answers across the net.
Also in regards to water, I have the choice of municipal water (that lovely yellow stuff in the picture) or spring water. What would be better, or what should I look for to determine which is better? And if I use spring water, do I need the water conditioner?
I would have liked to refine this post a bit more, because it probably seems a bit jumbled at the moment, but I'm at work and just wanted to get the email out! Thanks in advance for your help everyone!
PS: What the heck does BB stand for in regards to cycling a tank? I can't find that anywhere!
This all started with a dirty aquarium on the side of the road and the thought "Hey, no problem, we'll get this tank and some fish..."
My wife and I were driving through town during cleanup-week looking scavenging other people's garbage (beacuase we are cool like that!) and we saw this tank at someone's curb. It was pretty dirty, but it looked like mostly superficial dirt, so we thought thought we'd take it home, see if it was feasible to use, and we'd get some fish, and the kids would love it!
Fast forward 6 months or so (after some home renos that took priority) and I'm finally getting around to digging the aquarium out of the shed.
I think it is a 20 gal. It measures 12" x 24 x 16". I cleaned it all up, filled it with water. No Leaks! Ya!
I cleaned the filter, and tried it out. Seems to work well enough. It's a Whisper 20-40. From what I can tell it is from the 90's, but I can't find much info on it. Regardless, the bio-bags can be bought at Walmart, so no problem maintaining it. Good! I'm not sure about the bio-foam; It looks ok though, not falling apart. Can that still be used?
The lights are toast. I'm an electrician and an electronics tech, and I scavenge stuff from the side of the road and I looked at it and said, "Nope, not even gonna refurb that!" So, no, it's not worth bothering with. The plastic hood for the light is still good though and LED strips are so cheap on ebay, so I will be able to get that taken care of nicely I think. Do I need any specific wavelength of lighting if I'm not going to have any plants growing in it yet?
The glass under the light is also broken. Someone had tried to fix it with some caulking, but it didn't look like it had worked well. Anyway, I'll get a piece of glass for that. Can I use plexi-glass for that?
After I figured out what I had I went off to the LFS (see that, I'm already using the 'lingo'!) and started asking some really simple questions like the naive soul I was at that time. I discovered I needed some bottles of liquid to treat my water, and that I had to change 25% of my water every week, and that I had to buy new filter stuff every month or two, and that fish are small but expensive. I also needed a heater if I ever wanted to go beyond goldfish.
So that was great, now I had to go back to my wife and see if she was ok with all that too. Well she was, so I thought I should do a bit more research before I actually go any further; having had a few (too many according to my wife) other hobbies, I knew that I would be sold on a whole bunch of stuff that I probably didn't need if I just went about starting things off properly and with a bit of time and money investment up front. Turns out I was kinda right. There is that whole Nitrogen cycle thing!
So, after a trip to walmart, I have in total:
-tank (pretty sure it's 20 gal)
-filter
-heater
-Nutrafin Cycle
-Nutrafin Aquaplus
I would like to cycle my tank with fish in. Apparently that causes a lot of contention in forums like this. How feasible is it for me to do fish-in cycling my first time around? According to the LFS I just put in my water, put in the two Nutrafin products, and put in a couple of goldfish, and it should work out ok. It seems a little bit cludgy to me. I'd rather get a proper test kit (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH) and know what is going on, not just hap-hazardly adding mystery-product to bend the water to my will. Thoughts?
Unfortunately the area I live in is quite sparsely populated, so I won't have much luck getting a piece of someone else's substrate or filter to kick start things. If I get my water in the tank today with the conditioner, how feasible is it to put goldfish in tomorrow without torturing the fish? Should I use the Nutrafin Cycle, or not? There seem to be conflicting answers across the net.
Also in regards to water, I have the choice of municipal water (that lovely yellow stuff in the picture) or spring water. What would be better, or what should I look for to determine which is better? And if I use spring water, do I need the water conditioner?
I would have liked to refine this post a bit more, because it probably seems a bit jumbled at the moment, but I'm at work and just wanted to get the email out! Thanks in advance for your help everyone!
PS: What the heck does BB stand for in regards to cycling a tank? I can't find that anywhere!